The 'Arbimagical' Goal of the $1,000 Genome
30/08/10 16:08 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
Submitted by S. Pelech - Kinexus on Mon, 08/30/2010 - 16:08.
While the material costs of sequencing a human genome might conceivably reach $1000 in a few years, what is really relevant is how much it is going to cost a person who want's their own genome sequenced? Furthermore, what is it going to cost to get the DNA sequence translated to yield personal information of practical value? Governments and health insurance companies are not going to pay these costs for the average citizen.
The purchase and maintenance of equipment for $1000 genome analyses will not be cheap and these and other overhead costs will have to be factored into the provision of any service to provide a full genomic analysis. The labour time to prepare a full report of a human genome in a meaningful way, even if major aspects are automated, will be staggering. The average lawyer or accountant charges about $300 to $400 per hour. What will a genetic consultant charge?
When one further factors in inflation, which is very likely to markedly increase soon, perhaps the costs of requisite sequencing chemicals and other materials might never get to as low as $1000. In any event, I seriously doubt that the true full loaded costs will ever reach this "arbimagical" number.
Moreover, as the limits of scalability are pushed with gene sequencing, the error rate is likely to markedly increase. This is especially problematic if it is the detection in mutations in DNA sequences that is the prime objective for sequencing whole genomes of individuals in the first place. The potential rate of false positives and negatives is staggering considering that there are about 2.9 billion base pairs in a human genome even with 30X coverage.
My guess is that it may eventually cost $10,000 for a quality genomic analysis, but even at this price, only the very wealthy or fool hardy would even contemplate such a personal expenditure.
Link to the original blog post.
While the material costs of sequencing a human genome might conceivably reach $1000 in a few years, what is really relevant is how much it is going to cost a person who want's their own genome sequenced? Furthermore, what is it going to cost to get the DNA sequence translated to yield personal information of practical value? Governments and health insurance companies are not going to pay these costs for the average citizen.
The purchase and maintenance of equipment for $1000 genome analyses will not be cheap and these and other overhead costs will have to be factored into the provision of any service to provide a full genomic analysis. The labour time to prepare a full report of a human genome in a meaningful way, even if major aspects are automated, will be staggering. The average lawyer or accountant charges about $300 to $400 per hour. What will a genetic consultant charge?
When one further factors in inflation, which is very likely to markedly increase soon, perhaps the costs of requisite sequencing chemicals and other materials might never get to as low as $1000. In any event, I seriously doubt that the true full loaded costs will ever reach this "arbimagical" number.
Moreover, as the limits of scalability are pushed with gene sequencing, the error rate is likely to markedly increase. This is especially problematic if it is the detection in mutations in DNA sequences that is the prime objective for sequencing whole genomes of individuals in the first place. The potential rate of false positives and negatives is staggering considering that there are about 2.9 billion base pairs in a human genome even with 30X coverage.
My guess is that it may eventually cost $10,000 for a quality genomic analysis, but even at this price, only the very wealthy or fool hardy would even contemplate such a personal expenditure.
Link to the original blog post.